I just switched to Cubase 9.5 Pro after many years of Sonar. Sonar Platinum came with some great synths (ie Dimension Pro), but I don't think they work in the Cubase 9.5 64-bit world (anyone?). I notice the basic HALion SE orchestra sounds that come with Cubase 9.5 Pro aren't that great. I'm not really into editing and sampling my own sounds (I just want to have great strings, french horns, oboes etc). Both HALion 6 and Kontakt 6 seem pricey (+$300). Also, HALion 6 seems to offer all this editing and sampling functionality (where my goal is just to have good sounds). I see Sample Tank 3 is available in the $99 range. Is that something I should pick up for starters? Can I assume it is compatible with Cubase 9.5 Pro? Thank you.

Sample Tank 3 is very good value. There are heaps of very decent orchestral sounds there, some that I return to regularly. Many string sounds are decent too, but depending on your needs, you may need some add-ons to satisfy you there, or eventually look elsewhere. But well worth checking out, imho. Good luck!

I'm a novice and I must be doing something very wrong - it can't be that it is not possible (or extremely tedious) to create multiple tracks in Cubasis from Sample Tank -- or can it?

I'm using Cubasis 2 with Sample Tank into which I've loaded the Miroslav package and Im trying to use multiple (4 to orchestral) numbers of Miroslav tracks. When I try to add a second MIDI track I get an error message. The various different methods around this (freezing, using audio tracks instead) have not worked for me - maybe my error.

But I think I'm doing something wrong because you guys talk about using Sample Tank as if there are no fundamental problems like this.